Whiting: Investigator goes underground in skinhead world

Oct. 15, 2012

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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An undercover investigator for the Orange County Sheriff's Department works the streets looking for gang members breaking the law. He is considered to be Orange County's top expert in white racist criminal gangs. BRUCE CHAMBERS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Considered to be Orange County's top expert in white racist criminal gangs, he spends his time in the field looking for lawbreakers, catching them in the act. BRUCE CHAMBERS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

1 of 3

In 2010, Operation Stormfront targeted white supremacist gangs in Orange County.In all, 34 suspects were arrested, nearly half on charges ranging from extortion to murder. The top guy was Wayne “Bullet” Marshall, an Orange County Jail inmate and a member of the infamous prison gang, the Aryan Brotherhood. Bullet was a reputed shot caller. FILE: ROD VEAL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

An undercover investigator for the Orange County Sheriff's Department works the streets looking for gang members breaking the law. He is considered to be Orange County's top expert in white racist criminal gangs.BRUCE CHAMBERS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Wednesday: Inside the world of the former leader of one of Orange County's largest and most violent gangs.

Thursday: Why a former Irvine high school student took over a gang, how he found redemption.

Friday: Battling hate, changing culture.

David Whiting's sources

Sources for this series include police records, reports from the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, white advocacy essays, manifestos and videos as well as interviews with academic experts, former gang members and white supremacists.

Second of six parts.

Looking into the eyes of an undercover operative in the Orange County Sheriff's Department is strange, his trust in me a matter of life and death.

His mission is to bust white racist criminal gangs who live in a world of swastika tattoos, drug trafficking, illegal gun sales and assassinations.

Since it surfaced that the skinhead responsible for the Wisconsin Sikh killings once lived in Orange County, I've dug into neo-Nazis, white supremacists and criminal gangs. There are important differences.

This man – I'll call him Jack – isn't tatted up like the undercover guys on TV. Jack specializes in surveillance, both highly technical and old-fashioned.

He's taken down dozens of guys so scary that if you saw them, you'd walk the other way.

He's also prevented murders of gang members ordered by leaders known as "shot callers."

Why not allow them to kill one another and let God sort them out?

Jack's answer is as much from the mind as it is from the heart.

• • •

You may recall Operation Stormfront in 2010, called Orange County's "largest-ever takedown of white-supremacist gangs."

In all, 34 suspects were arrested on charges that included extortion and murder.

The top guy was Wayne "Bullet" Marshall, an Orange County Jail inmate and a member of the infamous prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood. Bullet was a reputed shot caller.

Lots of people were at the news conference. District Attorney Tony Rackauckas stood before a table with 27 guns. Kevin O'Grady of the Anti-Defamation League put the bust in context, explaining that our county has the highest concentration of skinhead groups in the nation.

Indeed, the list of gangs was – and remains – a who's who in the white supremacist underworld: Along with the Aryan Brotherhood, the gangs included La Mirada Punks, West Coast Costa Mesa Skins, O.C. Skins and Nazi Low Riders.

But there was one guy missing from the news conference who was involved in almost every step of the operation – the guy I'm talking to.

Thirty-two months later, Jack says that because of Operation Stormfront, law enforcement "still has the upper hand with white supremacist gangs in Orange County."

I press Jack on exactly how the good guys have managed to stay ahead. He looks down, then up. "Because I've been able to infiltrate."

• • •

Like many people with a passion, Jack has a patient spouse. He also has a supportive family. It's a Friday and I ask about his week. He says it's busy, exciting, fruitful. But not family fare.

Tuesday night, a tip about a planned hit turned into a lead. With Jack and his partners working it, they uncovered the who, when, where and what.

The who was a South County O.C. Skins gang member, the what a sawed-off shotgun. The when, a ticking clock.

Jack and partners staked out the where – a Dana Point restaurant. Jack pulls out a folded piece of paper from his jeans pocket and places it on the table in front of me. It's a photo of a dirty mattress cover. On top are a pistol-style AK-47 and a modified short-barrel shotgun with a silencer.

Jack taps the paper. "That guy's looking at 30 to life."

"Third striker?" Jack nods.

He explains staying up with technology is critical to success. But technology isn't fail-safe.

With self-effacing humor, Jack tells about the time that he and his partners followed the GPS signal from a suspect's cellphone. They went through town after town. Finally, the signal stopped at a house.

But instead of the suspect, they found a befuddled man who explained someone had given him the cellphone – for free.

Usually, results are different, very different.

• • •

Jack explains something important to understanding the differences among white supremacist groups:

For hard-core criminal gangs it's more about crime than race.

Sure, many members have "88" tattoos – H is the eighth letter of the alphabet and 88 stands for Heil Hitler. And they have "14" tattooed for the white supremacist movement's 14-word slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

But some gang members quietly have girlfriends of color. Moreover, the Aryan Brotherhood, a powerful white prison gang, has a long and documented partnership with the Mexican Mafia.

Still, in certain settings under certain circumstances – often a mob mentality – gang members attack people of color.

In Newport Beach on July 7, 2006, Ronald Lee Bray – a member of the ultraviolent gang Public Enemy Number One – attacked an African American man in a wheelchair – spitting on him, calling him racial epithets and pushing him into a light pole. Bray finished his assault with a Nazi salute.

Jack points out that white racist gangs more often end up preying on whites. They also kill their own.

On March 8, 2002, Billy Joe Johnson, a member of Public Enemy, ambushed and killed founding member Scott Miller in an Anaheim alley. Mike Lamb and Jacob Rump also were convicted in the killing.

Miller's sin? Blabbing about his gang on TV.

• • •

White racist gangs differ from Latino and black turf-oriented gangs in that they are highly mobile and often stay in motels.

Melissa Carr, regional director for the ADL, reports that Orange County's white criminal gangs have seeped into the Inland Empire to the point that the area has become a base of activity.

Jack says the gangs make money trafficking in crystal methamphetamine and heroin, running prostitutes, using and selling stolen or fake credit and gift cards, and ripping off drug dealers.

The investigator likens what he does to playing chess while white racist criminals play checkers. Still, he respects the leaders' organizational and communication skills.

"Some have real good business sense and could make money legally. Some are just morons who want to fit in."

Along with shot callers, there are moneymakers who tend to be members with the least threatening appearances and enforcers with the ... well, those are guys who make most people squirm just with their shaved heads and tattoos.

When a leader wants something done, he sends a "kite," usually a small piece of paper often secretly transferred from one inmate to another in a court holding tank.

Being asked to execute a hit, Jack says, is regarded as an honor, a promotion. "If the Aryan Brotherhood wants you, they're going to get you."

But not if Jack has his way.

• • •

When Jack discusses his passion for his job – a job that sometimes means saving bad guys from being killed by bad guys – he talks about ripple effects, about families.

The sworn officer explains, "I'm not just saving the guy I'm dealing with."

He cites one unsolved killing of a gang member that he's been working on for five years. "I'm not going to solve it because I care for (the victim). I'm going to solve it because of the mother."

Jack says that he's an emotional guy and that's part of his fuel. He tells a story about a young woman (white) who fell under a gang member's spell. She was beaten and gang-raped.

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